Is David Triesman - a Spurs fan and Blairite - really the right man to take FA helm and lead our national game

FA bosses were determined never again to suffer the humiliating fall- out that followed secretary Faria Alam's intimate revelations of how she romped with then England coach Sven Goran Eriksson and chief executive Mark Palios.

But the decision to put forward Lord Triesman of Tottenham for the post comes at a particularly uncomfortable time for him and Labour.

The lifelong Spurs fan's name was recently dragged into the maelstrom surrounding the party's 'dodgy donations'.

The loyal Blairite was the party's general secretary when they accepted £ 75,000 in cheques which later turned out to be donated illegally.

It emerged that property tycoon David Abrahams had used other people's names to pay the money to shroud his identity.

Labour sources have questioned exactly what Lord Triesman knew about the donation — but he has vehemently denied any impropriety.

Lord Triesman, 64, has risen through the ranks of Labour politics and currently sits in the House of Lords as students minister at the recentlyformed Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills.

Educated at the Stationers' Company School in north London, the University of Essex and King's College, Cambridge, Lord Triesman gained a reputation as a radical.

In 1968, he was suspended from Essex after being identified as the ringleader of a group which broke up a meeting addressed by a Government defence scientist from Porton Down. He was reinstated after students went on strike.

He enjoyed a brief flirtation with the Communist Party in 1970 and 1976, then worked as a lecturer and economics professor.

A distinguished academic, he became a full-time union official at the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education from 1984 to 1993, then was general secretary of the Association of University Teachers from 1993 to 2001.

Between 2001 and 2003, he was general secretary of Labour with responsibility for tackling the party's debt mountain and shoring up plummeting membership.

In 2004 he was made a life peer by Tony Blair and became a whip in the Lords before becoming a Foreign Office minister.

He will now step down from that job provided his new role is rubber-stamped by the FA council next month.

A season-ticket holder at Spurs, he played amateur football and was a senior referee for the London and Middlesex FAs for eight years.

He co-authored a book called Football Mania: The Players And The Fans — The Mass Psychology Of Football which was published by Ocean in 1973.

Lord Triesman is also a member of Middlesex County Cricket Club and lists his hobbies as playing the guitar, mountain walking and reading. He married his wife Lucy in 2004.